Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horrors

Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horrors is exactly what you’d expect it to be. When a megastar lends his name to what obviously sounds like a B movie, the most optimistic hope is that it relishes in its cheesiness, but most likely it will be incompetent straight-to-video schlock.

Movie Review: Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horrors

In this anthology, an animated intro shows how Devon (Snoop Dogg) becomes the devil’s servant to save his sister’s life. Then he raps a little about the horrors of the hood and takes us into the first story. First up, a girl who lost her mother to gang violence obtains the power to mark gang members for death with her graffiti. Second, a spoiled white couple takes over a military retirement home and abuses the veterans until they seek revenge. Finally, a rap star lets success go to his head and pays the price in a This is Your Life style recap of his sins.

The beginning is pretty good. Snoop telling the devil, “Man, go f*** yo’self, n****” is classic, even in anime. His smooth live-action intro hanging with vampy chicks, sporting a golden suit seems to understand camp. There’s a vomiting midget and some horrorific twists on hood clichés.

Even the first story is as good a ripoff of Final Destination as you could hope for. When she crosses out a gangsta’s graffiti, some crazy circumstances lead to his ultra-gory death. At least it’s about something, even though the actors seem to come from the William Shatner school of drama.

The second story just becomes irritating. We get it. The white folks are A-holes. When are you going to just kill them already? That’s all we came to see. And the third story, who really cares about another egotist, whether they get some payback or not?

One of the problems is that every single story is a revenge tale. If you’re going to do three stories, couldn’t at least one be about a victim where we actually fear for their survival?

Snoop gets some good lines for his interstitials but otherwise the dialogue is painful. I’m sure real street talk is worse, but if Snoop knows how to spin the lingo for ironic effect, somebody could have put a whole script together.

There’s not much point in criticizing any further. This was always going to be just a fun piece of fluff and you either get a kick out of it or you don’t. It would surprise no one that the stories are below pedestrian and the acting hopelessly uneven. For every respectable performance by a veteran there are three by pretty faces who came cheap.

Take Hood of Horrors for what it is. Some will enjoy any excuse for gratuitous violence. It certainly doesn’t take itself seriously. But most fans can find plenty of better horror movies to satisfy the same need.